Sleet Wheat Grain Decay? I lost 5000+ grains all at once!

[Levicarnus]

Update 2: Greep (post #10 on here) just confirmed that there is a problem here: normal food (meal lice, for example) doesn't spoil all at once, only one at a time. If Klei's reading this, please change sleet wheat grains to decay a maximum of 25 grains at a time so entire food stockpiles don't disappear and force dupes to go back to making mush bars.

Update: maybe someone could move this to the suggestions part of this forum? This is more of a suggestion thread and I didn't notice there was a suggestion forum before posting.

I got a notice saying I had sleet wheat grain decay in the storage compactor (which I had in an area at about -5 degrees celcius at the time) that I was storing it all in, then checked it to see that apparently ALL my grains disappeared into no more than a single rotten sleet wheat grain!

Thanks to autosaving, I can go back so I can cook enough to probably last until the next harvest and store any new grains in a different compactor (though I'll probably start over, see if I can make a new colony stable all over again). But destroying the brand new sleet wheat grains along with the more recently added grains? I'm not even sure if sleet wheat grains are supposed to spoil (at low temperatures at least, they probably should if they heat up). Either way, this could use a hotfix...

What I would do is sort perishable goods based on when they were stored/harvested. For example, if you harvested crops on cycle 50 and cycle 75 and they last for 50 cycles, all the crops gathered during cycle 50 would decay on cycle 100 and the cycle 75 harvest would spoil on cycle 125. Furthermore, the stack for goods that will spoil soonest will be used first.

Let's not have brand new perishables spoil at the exact same time as old parishables, that doesn't make any sense at all...

P.S. Another thing about Sleet Wheat is that it's comparably overpowered. All you have to do is harvest one and plant all the seeds, then once you get your first harvest you'll have all the food production you could ask for, even if you only get standard yeilds. If having a crop like this is intentional, that's great, but it is worth mentioning that it makes mealwood and blossoms look useless, especially in a colony's later stages, more so since you can leave it alone and still be able to plant more.

[Ray64]

The game has a concept of a sterile environment in which food decay is prevented. The environments which cause food decay are those which have oxygen in them. So any environment which is saturated in a non-oxygen gas like co2 or alternatively is a vacuum is considered sterile and food will keep indefinitely.

[Levicarnus]

Originally posted by Ray64:

The game has a concept of a sterile environment in which food decay is prevented. The environments which cause food decay are those which have oxygen in them. So any environment which is saturated in a non-oxygen gas like co2 or alternatively is a vacuum is considered sterile and food will keep indefinitely.

I did not know that. Still, quite something to see my entire food stockpile to disappear on me all at once based solely on the decay timer of what I first put in storage...

[AquaX]

There are a few things to prolong food like items. Refrigerated occurs in 0 or under temp. Sterile environment occurs in any gas as long as it is not o2 or po2. So co2, chlorine, hydrogen can work as to hold food.

[Emelio Lizardo]

I put a food locker in my cold biome, I was tired of freezer failure.

[Butts McGee]

Make the food locker a CO2 pit in a cold biome. The seeds will last much, much longer.

Also, it's not based on the first seed. It averages out the "freshness" as you add new seeds.

1 seed in storage at 50% + 1 new seed being added at 100% = 75% 2 seeds

[Levicarnus]

Originally posted by DRUNK NURSE:

Make the food locker a CO2 pit in a cold biome. The seeds will last much, much longer.

Also, it's not based on the first seed. It averages out the "freshness" as you add new seeds.

1 seed in storage at 50% + 1 new seed being added at 100% = 75% 2 seeds

That's better than how I thought it worked, but that means having enough grains on the brink of spoiling could near instantly spoil a small amount of grains. And given how long it takes for Sleet Wheat to grow, sudden spoilage of the whole storage compactor can still hit you like a land mine you didn't see until you stepped on it.

I don't think I like that spoilage system either. In the real world, you can eat older foods before they spoil and save the food that needs time to ripen for later. In the Oxygen Not Included universe (in its current version), if you, for example, put a green banana with a bunch of brown ones, the brown ones turn slightly more yellow, but the green one instantly turns yellow and spotty, if not also brown. Averaging out the spoil timers may be a quick and easy way to handle spoiling, but it's not realistic and that's why I'd like to see a change.

At the minimum, it would be great if we got yellow warnings that said food is 10% spoiled or worse so dupes could cook and/or eat it before it disappears.

[PhailRaptor]

I made a "preserve room" using the CO2 exhaust from my NatGas Generator. Fully enclosed room setup with a triple Airlock, space for 5 Ration Boxes (for finished food) and 2 Storage Compactors (for Sleet Wheat). When I start reorganizing my base, I'll eventually rework it to also be cold in addition to sterile.

[Emelio Lizardo]

Per space, the freezer is better than the food box. Could a few unpowered freezers be placed in a cold/CO2 area?

It would be nice to see the colonists programed to handle food more inteligently.

[Levicarnus]

Originally posted by Emelio Lizardo:

Per space, the freezer is better than the food box. Could a few unpowered freezers be placed in a cold/CO2 area?

It would be nice to see the colonists programed to handle food more inteligently.

The other thing is if dupes put food in unpowered fridges (I have yet to see this, I haven't had overstocked fridges yet).

And ya, smarter food handling would be great.

[Greep]

It's probably a bug based on sleet weet being both food and seed. Other rotten food doesn't have this issue and rots one by one.

As for preserving it so it doesn't happen again, make a small room with insulated walls and one door in a corner right next to your cooking area, and shove a few wheezeworts on either side of the storage container. They're not great at large scale cooling but are excellent at keeping small insulated areas cool.

[Levicarnus]

Originally posted by Greep:

It's probably a bug based on sleet weet being both food and seed. Other rotten food doesn't have this issue and rots one by one.

As for preserving it so it doesn't happen again, make a small room with insulated walls and one door in a corner right next to your cooking area, and shove a few wheezeworts on either side of the storage container. They're not great at large scale cooling but are excellent at keeping small insulated areas cool.

Ahah, so there is a problem here! Hopefully sleet wheat spoils the same way food does (or 25 seeds at once maximum since that's the minimum harvest from one plant), it ruined my game when I lost all my stockpiled seeds.